When Jacob Ridgehorn dies, it's up to Roby Snow to make sure his soul goes on to the eternal reward. The only way Roby can do that is convince the Ridgehorn family to eat a special pie, but a mysterious figure named Johnny Divine is guarding the crossroads. When peculiar Appalachian Mountain funeral customs get stirred into the mix, Roby has to perform miracles…or else. Novella originally published in the Cemetery Dance anthology "Brimstone Turnpike."
Learn more about Burial to Follow at the Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
FLOWERS
By Scott Nicholson
Features the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award grand-prize winner "The Vampire Shortstop" and other tales of fantasy, such as "When You Wear These Shoes" and "In the Heart of November." Includes the Makers series where children control the elements, as well as more tales of magic, romance, and the paranormal.
Learn more about Flowers and the award-winning "The Vampire Shortstop" or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
ASHES
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of supernatural and paranormal stories by award-winning author Scott Nicholson, including "Homecoming," "The Night is an Ally" and "Last Writes." From the author of THE RED CHURCH, THE SKULL RING, and the story collections FLOWERS and THE FIRST, these stories visit haunted islands, disturbed families, and a lighthouse occupied by Edgar Allan Poe. Exclusive introduction by Jonathan Maberry, author of THE DRAGON FACTORY and GHOST ROAD BLUES, as well as an afterword.
Learn more about the supernatural stories in Ashes or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
THE FIRST
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of dark fantasy and futuristic stories from award-winning author Scott Nicholson. Dystopia, cyberpunk, and science fiction imbue these stories that visit undiscovered countries and distant times. Includes two bonus essays and Nicholson's first-ever published story, in addition to the four-story Aeropagan cycle.
Learn more about the fantasy and science fiction stories in The First or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
ZOMBIE BITS
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of zombie stories, from the zombie point-of-view to the shoot-‘em-up survival brand of apocalyptic horror. Proof that even zombies have a heart…Based on the comic book currently in development by Scott Nicholson and Derlis Santacruz. With a bonus story by Jack Kilborn, a comic script, and Jonathan Maberry’s "Zombie Apocalypse Survival Scorecard."
Learn more about Zombie Bits and see zombie art or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
CURTAINS
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of crime and mystery tales from the vaults of Scott Nicholson. Includes "How to Build Your Own Coffin" and Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror selection "Dog Person," as well as the psychological thrillers "Letters and Lies," "Sewing Circle," and more stories that appeared in magazines such as Crimewave, Cemetery Dance, and Blue Murder. Includes and afterword and a bonus story from bestselling authors J.A. Konrath and Simon Wood.
Learn more about Curtains: Mystery Stories or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
GATEWAY DRUG
By Scott Nicholson
After the first hit, there's no turning back. Ten tales of horror and suspense from a bestselling author. A man learns fast cars and fast women don't mix, even when they're dead. A young boy discovers the terrible power of love. A rock musician will do anything for stardom. Bonus contributions from Tim Lebbon and Shane Jiraiya Cummings, as well as the afterword "One Sick Puppy."
Learn about Gateway Drug or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK
HEAD CASES
By Scott Nicholson
Nine stories of psychological suspense and paranoid horror, featuring the first-ever appearance of "Fear Goggles." Collected from the pages of Crimewave, The Psycho Ward, Cemetery Dance, and more, find out what happens when a writer thinks Stephen King is stealing his ideas. Bonus stories by William Meikle and John Everson.
Learn more about Head Cases for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
THESE THINGS HAPPENED
By Scott Nicholson
It's been a strange life. It's been my life. Features stories, poems, and essays on relationships, romance, writing, and taking oneself far too seriously. Plus some humor. You may laugh, you may cry, you may decide you want to be a writer, too. You may hate me after if it's over. That's okay. You wouldn't be the first. Learn about These Things Happened. Or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
IF I WERE YOUR MONSTER
Children's book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis
Creatures of the night teach a lesson of bravery in this full-color, illustrated bedtime story for all ages. Let vampires, ghosts, scarecrows, and mummies protect your little one from the bullies and mean people of the world. 24 screens or pages. View it at Haunted Computer or at Amazon US or Amazon UK
TOO MANY WITCHES
Children’s book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis
When Moanica Moonsweep plans a Halloween party, she needs the perfect potion of stinky stew. But when she asks her friends for advice, she ends up with one big mess and lots of hurt feelings. 28 full-color screens or pages. See it at Haunted Computer or for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
DUNCAN THE PUNKIN
Children's book by Scott Nicholson, art by Sergio Castro
A momma pumpkin must teach her young pumpkin all about the dangers of Halloween, while a mysterious creature known as Skeerdy-Cat-Crow watches over the pumpkin patch. 30 full-color pages or screens. See it at Haunted Computer or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
TROUBLED (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
When twelve-year-old Freeman Mills arrives at Wendover, a group home for troubled children, it’s a chance for a fresh start. But second chances aren’t easy for Freeman, the victim of painful childhood experiments that gave him the ability to read other people’s minds.
Little does Freeman know that his transfer was made at the request of Dr. Richard Kracowski, whose research into the brain’s electrical properties is revealing new powers of the human mind. Freeman simply wants to survive, take his medicine for manic depression, and deceive his counsellors into believing he is happy. When he meets the anorexic Vicky, who may also be telepathic, he’s afraid some of his darkest secrets will be uncovered. But when the other children develop their own clairvoyant abilities, and insane spirits begin haunting the halls of Wendover, he can’t safely hide inside his own head anymore.
The author’s preferred edition of the 2005 U.S. paperback release The Home, in development as a feature film.
Learn more about the paranormal thriller Troubled or view it at Amazon UK
SOLOM (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
Katy Logan wasn’t quite sure why she left her finance career in the big city to marry religion professor Gordon Smith and move to the tiny Appalachian community of Solom.
Maybe she just wanted to get her 12-year-old daughter Jett away from the drugs and bad influences. Maybe she wanted to escape from the memories of her first husband. Or perhaps she was enchanted by the promise of an idyllic life on the farm that has been in Gordon’s family for 150 years.
But the residents of Solom know all about the man in the black hat. The Reverend Harmon Smith has come back more than century after his last missionary trip, and he has unfinished business. But first Katy and Jett must be brought into the family, and the farm must be prepared to welcome him home. Gordon has been denying his heritage, but now it’s time to choose sides. Does he protect the ones he loves, or surrender to the ancestral urge for revenge?
Author's preferred edition of the 2006 U.S. paperback The Farm.
Learn more about the supernatural thrillerSolom or view it at Amazon UK
THE GORGE (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
An experimental rafting expedition, an FBI manhunt for a delusional killer, and the worst storm in decades collide in the remote mountain
wilderness...and then THEY come out.
Bowie Whitlock and a team of celebrity athletes is commissioned to test two experimental rafts in the rugged Unegama Wilderness Gorge in the remote Appalachian Mountains, considered the most dangerous whitewater rapids in the eastern United States. The expedition is tense from the start as jealousy, romance, and money are riding on the mission's success.
FBI agent Jim Castle and his partner are in the gorge looking for Ace Goodall, a deranged abortion clinic bomber. Ace, accompanied by a fragile young woman, is having visions that guide his murderous behaviour. The race is on as dark storm clouds gather, the river is swollen, and Ace hijacks the rafting expedition to make his escape. But the bloodthirsty creatures swooping down from the high cliffs have been too long without prey.
Ace has one more bomb. God is talking to him. It's raining again, and his young companion is pregnant.
And killing isn't what it used to be, because the dead no longer stay dead.
Author's preferred edition of the 2007 paperback They Hunger.
Learn more about The Gorge or view it at Amazon UK
OMNIBUS EDITIONS
You can also save with the omnibus editions
Ethereal Messenger at Amazon US or Amazon UK (contains The Red Church, Drummer Boy, and Speed Dating With The Dead)
Mystery Dance (contains Disintegration, Crime Beat, and The Skull Ring, and bonus stories and essays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Nicholson's Ghost Stories: Four Novels, at Amazon US or Amazon UK (featuring Drummer Boy by Scott Nicholson, Haunted by Gemma Halliday, The Body Departed by J.R. Rain, and Cades Cove by Aiden James)
Horror Movies: Three Screenplays (The Gorge, Creative Spirit, and The Skull Ring screenplays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Skeleton Tango (Cursed! and Ghost College with J.R. Rain) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Ghost Box (contains The Red Church, Drummer Boy, Transparent Lovers, Burial to Follow, Forever Never Ends, and Speed Dating With The Dead) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Are you a writer? Please check out Write Good or Die and The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success
Contact me at [email protected] because I’d love to know what you think—and if you are in any way dissatisfied with this product, please give me a chance to make it right. Let me know about any misspellings and formatting issues, since books in the digital age are living documents.
Thanks to Dellaster Design, David H. Burton, and Neal Hock at Hock’s Editing Services.
Scott
[email protected]
www.hauntedcomputer.com
Table of Contents
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A paranormal conference at a remote Appalachian hotel accidentally stirs up demons.
Speed Dating with the Dead
Excerpt: A paranormal thriller
By Scott Nicholson
Chapter 1
“And here’s our most haunted room, Mr. Wilson.”
The brass name plate over the hostess’s breast read “Violet,” an old-fashioned name that didn’t match her JC Penney pants suit. Early twenties and attractive, the make-up failed to hide the hard years around her eyes. But Wayne Wilson had logged his own hard years, and he hid them in the coffin of his heart.
“Call me ‘Digger,’” he said.
“‘Digger’?” Violet said.
“I have this little undertaker thing going on,” he admitted, feeling a bit sheepish under her blue-eyed stare. “The top hat and Victorian coattails. Part of the gig.”
Wow. Beth, if you really are here, you’ll see what a cartoon I’ve become.
But the dead stayed dead, and the best thing about them was they weren’t in a position to second guess. But the worst thing about them was they weren’t around when you needed them.
“So, have you ever had any experiences here?” Wayne asked, eyeing the décor and fighting the rush of memories.
“I’ve never had a honeymoon, and I would choose somewhere a little more exotic than the North Carolina mountains. Like maybe Dollywood or Paris.”
“I meant ‘supernatural experiences.’”
“Just those brain-dead zombies who hit on me at the bar.”
Wayne was only half listening. The master bedroom of Room 318 had changed little since his stay 17 years earlier. The roses on the wallpaper had yellowed, and each wall held an autumnal mountain landscape. Imitation Queen Anne furniture, chipped and scarred by cigarette burns, a plush purple carpet in which rodents could reproduce, and the king-size, four-poster bed were the same as his honeymoon night.
Even the throw pillows appeared unchanged, skinned in greasy satin and leaning against the headboard the same way his and Beth’s heads had leaned on a cold autumn night. Before they opened the door.
“The manager’s pleased you chose the White Horse for your conference,” Violet said.
I didn’t choose. I was chosen.
“You have quite a reputation,” Wayne said. “Nobody keeps their ghosts secret for long.”
“Ghosts are good for business. Especially in the off-season.”
“It should be good for both of us.”
“We booked about 50 for the weekend.”
“Too bad you can’t charge your invisible guests. You’ve got at least three here in 318.”
“Ah, you’ve been browsing the Ghost Register,” she said, referring to the journal at the front desk where guests and staff had faithfully recorded their encounters.
One of the victims had been a stock broker who had suffered a heart attack during his honeymoon, and though the urban legend maintained he’d died on top of his new wife, the Rescue Squad report said he’d been discovered on the floor with half a corn dog in his mouth and an empty bottle of champagne sitting in a tin bucket of water.
The second was a jumper, a documented death in which a distraught tool fabricator had launched into a frothing rant about a two-timing, backstabbing bitch before launching himself off the balcony in a fall that would likely have resulted in nothing more than a few fractures if he’d have missed the lamp post. You could call it coincidence, you could call it bad luck, but it made for a better campfire tale if you called it “the Wicked Hand of Evil.”
The third victim was the most interesting to Wayne, because it didn’t have the glib familiarity of the other deaths, which were not much different than those suffered at any of America’s century-old hotels. As the manager, a powder-dry walking mummy named Janey Mays, had put it, any building with a few generations behind it would end up with a slate of strange happenings.
Janey hadn’t recognized him from his long-ago visit. But why should she? He was young and happy then, a clean-shaven newlywed and 100-percent demon free.
“What do you know about Margaret Percival?” Wayne asked Violet.
“Just the stuff in the register.” Violet opened the television cabinet as if to make sure the maids hadn’t stolen the TV.
“West Virginia woman, checked into this room in February, 1948.”
“I don’t think the color scheme has changed since then.” She whacked the dark floral pattern on the velour curtain, and a lazy haze of dust spun in the sunlit window.
Margaret was a war widow, in town for a reunion of the Camp Creek Sisterhood, a collective of well-to-do white teenagers who spent the summers of the Great Depression in their one-piece, baggy swimsuits, canoeing, singing “Tomorrow” around the fire, and talking about boys, when they weren’t sneaking off in the dead of night to meet them at movie theaters and fumble in the dark.
Perhaps the reunion was an opportunity to recapture the lost innocence of youth, or perhaps Margaret was seeking a veneer of respectability after a notorious past. But she never made it to the reunion luncheon, because between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. early one Sunday, she vanished from the face of the Earth. Police reports hinted that she might have been in the “family way,” and a single mother and alleged prostitute might sneak across the border to get rid of the problem.
Hotel
management built their businesses on reputation, and mysterious disappearances were the kind of publicity they wanted to avoid. It was a measure of how far the White Horse Inn had fallen that it was now cashing in on its seedier, supernatural side.
Just like me. We’ve both been ridden hard since our paths last crossed.
And there was a fourth case study, totally off the record, one that Wayne carried in his guts like a latex glove full of broken, bloody glass. He’d delayed his return as long as he could, but Beth might not wait forever.
Violet moved over to the bedside dresser, where the alarm clock was blinking. “Old wiring,” she said. “The radio cuts on by itself, too.”
“Let me guess. I’ll be awoken at three every morning by the theme song from ‘The Exorcist.’”
The room’s angles, like those of the rest of the inn, were off by two or three degrees in every joint. Sagging floors and ceiling joists, warped window casings, and uneven spaces between cracks in the crown molding projected a sense of decay and despair.
The unease came from an expectation of order, and the skewed geometry made a distinct impact on the brain. It added a pressure that caused skin to tingle and lungs to stutter, all tricks the mind played on the body. Combined with the out-of-whack wiring that scrambled the electrical signals of the brain, the structure made a wonderful laboratory for the living.
And a fun playground for the dead.
Violet reset the clock while Wayne examined the size of the room, calculating how many hunters the place would hold. He could have booked the room in private, set up some gear, and conducted his own private little tea party, but hosting a paranormal conference gave the necromancy the sheen of respectability. Plus it offered the fringe benefit of not facing his demons alone.
Scott Nicholson Library Vol 1 Page 93